


you don't need poltergeists for sidekicks

by danishsweethearts



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Near Death Experiences, dicktiger but it's like bait, set during spyral times even tho i hate that shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 08:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24348370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danishsweethearts/pseuds/danishsweethearts
Summary: During his time in Spyral, Dick finds himself alone on death's door. He gets a familiar visitor.Then, he keeps coming back.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Tiger
Comments: 39
Kudos: 247
Collections: Dick & Damian, everybody loves dick





	1. Chapter 1

The first time it happens, Dick finds himself sitting in some dark alley, propped up against a wall. It’s his chosen refuge, after finally managing to shake his attackers, who had unfortunately been above the garden-variety criminal thugs. They had been good enough to separate him from Tiger, and had been good enough that he didn’t get out unscathed. 

He’s pretty fucking scathed, actually. An array of minor injuries, scrapes and bruises, but his main issue is that he’d gotten shot in the leg. That’s never great, and hey! It gets worse, because Dick’s pretty sure there’s a burning in his bloodstream and a dizziness in his head that doesn’t come with a bullet.

Poison. Definitely poison.

He groans as the bricks on the other side of the alley swim in and out of view. It feels like—like if he just shook it off, just tried a little more, then he could break through the haze over his thoughts and overcome whatever’s in his blood and be _okay_ but—

He gasps as another wave of that burning, drowning feeling hits him. The conviction floats out of reach. He closes his eyes, panting, dimly aware that this might be it.

This might be it for real.

(Again.)

Then, there’s the sound of footsteps. They’re light: not the kind of light that comes with vigorous training in being sneaky, but the kind of light that comes with weighing less than the average adult. 

Too light to be Tiger. Too light to be any of his attackers. Dick hopes it’s not some kid wandering about the streets at night; this isn’t a pretty sight. Nothing a child should be seeing.

With more effort than he would like, he opens his eyes.

Damian Wayne walks into view. If Dick hadn't been dying before, he feels like he is now.

He looks around the alley, his nose wrinkling. Dick hadn’t chosen the most hygienic place to lie down and die. Still, after looking at the ground dubiously, Damian sits down.

He looks at Dick.

Dick looks back.

“Am I dead?” he rasps, wondering how he had missed that.

Damian looks around the alley again, then gives Dick a disparaging look. “Is this what you think the afterlife looks like?” he asks dryly.

Somewhere, deep inside the parts of Dick that had frozen over and withered dry, something sparks. He gives a weak laugh.

“Fair enough,” he rasps. Another wave of pain comes, and he clenches his teeth against it. Damian must see Dick’s wince, because his frown becomes more pronounced.

“You look terrible,” Damian declares. He looks exactly like Dick remembers him; sharp eyes but soft cheeks, small frame but huge presence. Dick’s missed him. He’s missed him so much.

Dick scrapes out another laugh from his poor, unused lungs. “Yeah,” he says, giving Damian a tired smile. “If I’m not dead, I’m sure on my way.”

Dick would normally never say anything like that, and especially not where Damian can hear, but… 

He’s on death’s door, he’s hallucinating dead people, and he figures he can have this moment of weakness.

Damian clicks his tongue. “Where is your partner?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at the entrance of the alley, as if he thinks Tiger is hiding just beyond, watching Dick die. 

Dick shrugs as best as he can. “Dunno,” he replies. “Probably taking his sweet time fighting off his attackers, the amateur.”

Damian huffs. “He probably hasn’t gotten himself shot, too,” he points out, which, yeah, fair.

Dick smiles again. He’s smiled more in the past five minutes than he has for the past five months, he thinks. 

The poison spreads, slowly, and Dick swears he can feel it creeping through his veins. He wonders how long it’ll take for it to kill him. It seems to be pretty slow-working, though he doesn’t know whether that’s because he has better resistance than most, or if the people who want him dead are just sadists.

He makes a choked off little gasp and throws his head back against the wall. The stars above swim in his vision. He’s so dizzy. It’s blood loss and poison and shock rolled up into one, and Dick wonders what would happen if he just gave in to the darkness encroaching on his vision. Just passed out, and let the poison work its way through him in peace.

Bruce wouldn’t find out for a while, probably. Not until their next check in, which is still some ways away. The others already think he’s dead, so nothing new there.

Tiger would be upset. He would move on quickly, sure, but Dick thinks he’ll be upset. It’s never easy losing a partner.

It’s never easy losing a partner.

Dick focuses his vision again, making the agonizing effort to turn his head back towards the other wall.

Damian is still there. His face is pale as he stares at Dick.

“It hurts?” Damian asks, already knowing the answer.

Dick swallows down the blood in his mouth. “Yeah,” he rasps. “It hurts, Robin.”

“I—” Damian starts, looking so upset that Dick wants to reach out. If he felt like he could move, he would probably try, but everything in him feels like it’s on fire. He wants to try anyway.

Damian turns his head away. “I wish I could help,” he says, curling his small hands into fists. A child’s hands, they were. Fast and steady when training. Precise and gentle when handling animals. 

Warm, shyly desperate, when held in Dick’s own hands.

“It’s okay,” Dick mumbles, unable to take the way Damian’s face has twisted up. “It’s—it’s okay.”

He wants to say more, like _it’s been a long time coming,_ or _I don’t mind anymore,_ except he still can’t bring himself to say those things aloud. Not like this.

It’s getting harder to breathe, and harder to think.

Damian turns back to look at him, his eyes wide and sad. It’s always the eyes, with Damian. They’re the key to reading him. 

He says, voice small, “It would be nice to see you again.”

Dick laughs, or maybe sobs, and feels the blood bubbling up in his throat. He coughs it up, and the bitter tang fills his mouth, another unescapable reminder that he’s dying. Fuck, he’s _dying._

“You would never say that,” Dick says, around the blood and breathlessness. “You… you would be so mad at me. For just lying here and giving up. You would want me to fight.”

 _You would want me to live,_ Dick thinks. At the end of the day, that might be the only thing still keeping him going. 

Damian smiles at him, brittle and breakable. All too breakable.

“I’m in your head,” he tells Dick. “I’m only saying what you want to hear,”

Dick nods, feeling tears burn at his eyes, hotter than the burn of the poison in his veins. Across the alley, Damian frowns again. His small hand raises up, making to reach out, before he thinks better of it.

 _I miss you,_ Dick thinks. _I miss you every second._

They’re silent for a moment. Dick can’t hear anything but his blood rushing in his ears. 

He says, voice a bare whisper, “It would. It would be nice.”

Another set of footsteps approach. They’re heavier, thundering in Dick’s ears as they draw closer.

 _“Agent 37,”_ Tiger yells from somewhere outside the alley. 

Damian stands up. The noise gets closer, and closer still. Dick’s never heard Tiger be so loud before.

Damian gives Dick one last smile, and it’s a rare one: gentle and fond and uninhibited by all the pain that characterizes Damian’s past. He walks out of Dick’s sight.

Tiger rounds the corner, running into the alley and cursing in languages Dick can only half pick out. Dick lets his head fall forward, and closes his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things i did not do while writing this fic: take 5 minutes to google knife wounds and understand how that shit would go down  
> things i did do while writing this fic: contemplate for 30 minutes about whether spyral would let dick see a therapist. #dickgraysongototherapychallenge

The next time, he’s not the one on the verge of death. There’s blood everywhere, but it isn’t his.

“Tiger,” Dick says. “That was stupid of you. That was  _ so _ stupid of you.”

He’s surprised, and distantly impressed, at how level his voice sounds. He guesses he must be getting used to his partners dying because of him. Hah. Tiger’s blood is all over him. 

_ Fuck. _

Tiger’s eyes flutter open. Blearily glaring at Dick, he mumbles, “Your—” before being cut off by a cough. The cough is accompanied by blood. 

Dick breathes in very, very deeply.

“Shut up,” he snaps. “Don’t talk. Just—just stay still.”

It’s ridiculous and unfair that even though Tiger just stepped in front of a knife for Dick and he’s now bleeding out on the ground from his stomach, he can still pull off a half-decent glare.

Sucking in a breath through clenched teeth, Tiger gathers all of his energy and grits out, “Your face is stupid,”

Dick laughs, and before he knows it, he’s choking on a sob. “Shut the fuck up,” he gasps. “I’m going to kick your ass when you get better,”

Tiger’s expression softens. Dick watches as the sullenness washes away, replaced by something that looks far too much like pity. Tiger opens his mouth, and Dick knows that he isn’t going to like what comes out next, so he keeps talking. Pushes right on. He’s good at that.

“I’ve seen worse,” he tells Tiger, pressing his hands over the wound. It’s an ugly one, although there’s never really a knife wound that  _ isn’t  _ ugly. Especially not one from a serrated blade being wielded by some strength-enhanced meta maniac. Fuck. Dick  _ hates _ this job. “One time, I saw a guy get pierced through the chest. Lung punctured. Wasn’t pretty. But he was okay, in the end; we got a Green Lantern in to bring him to safety, got him in surgery, fixed him up until he was as good as—”

Tiger coughs so violently that Dick feels some drops of blood hit his face. He trails off, horror and nausea competing with each other in his stomach. The gash is still bleeding so much. Even for a stomach injury. That blade had probably been coated in anticogualant.

“Can’t call any Lanterns this time,” Tiger rasps.

“I fucking could if I wanted to,” Dick snaps, angry, angrier than he should be. 

Tiger’s hazy eyes focus on him. Fuck.  _ Fuck. _ Dick shouldn’t have been so angry. He’s spent the last several months swinging between crushing emptiness and trembling rage, but he’s never given it away so obviously; he’s maybe not a good spy, but he’s a damn good performer. He looks away.

When he looks back, Tiger is still watching him, with a clarity that’s fucking preposterous coming from the stab wound victim.

Tiger’s smart. Smarter than nearly everyone in Spyral. Smarter than nearly everyone  _ outside _ Spyral. So smart that sometimes, it scares Dick. 

“Dick,” Tiger starts to say, but then he coughs again, and Dick can feel more blood splatter onto him, and then he’s watching Tiger’s eyes flutter close and his expression go slack.

Not again.  _ Not again. _ Dick’s heart almost gives out with the panic that washes over him, but he wrestles control back from all of the flighty, irrational parts of his brain. Tiger’s not dead yet. There’s still time. Tiger’s not dead yet, and he’s not  _ going _ to be dead for a long, long fucking time if Dick has anything to say about it.

He takes his hands off of the wound. He needs to stop the bleeding. He needs to suture the wound. He needs to get pain medication. He needs to—

“Cauterize it,” somebody says. “You need to cauterize the wound.”

Dick’s head snaps around.

Crouched next to him, knuckles clenched white, is Damian.

Dick turns back to Tiger, his breath catching. He can’t do this right now. He can’t fucking do this right now. He swallows down the sob building in his chest and thinks,  _ I need to cauterize the wound. _ He needs a knife. He needs heat.

A Swiss Army knife in his belt, handed out by Spyral. He had found it strangely, almost endearingly archaic, by the organization’s standards.

A lighter in his left pocket, to support people’s worser habits. He doesn’t smoke himself, but everyone likes the guy with the light.

They’ll have to do.

He goes through the process. When he presses the blade to the wound, Tiger snaps back to consciousness for a moment. Eyes wide with pain, a strangled gasp in his throat. Dick doesn’t know whether he wants him to be awake or not for this process, but it doesn’t matter; as quickly as he came back, Tiger drops out again. 

Dick pulls the knife away. He notices that his hands aren’t shaking. 

Damian is still there. His presence is the most alien comfort Dick has ever known, but it is a comfort all the same. Even if it’s his mind playing cruel tricks on him, Dick is so alone—dead partner and dying partner—that he takes what he can get.

Damian says, “That needs stitches.”

“I don’t have any medical supplies,”

“He’s not going to make it without suturing,” comes the reply.

Dick’s already halfway through pulling off his jacket and cutting it into strips, and he snarls, “Enough.” It’s a bit too vicious, a bit too cold, but Damian doesn’t call him out on it. 

Dick needs to keep a clear head. Dick needs to focus and not fuck this up. 

He wraps up the wound, watching the fabric start to soak up the blood already. It’s slower than it was, though, and it’s covered now; they won’t have to worry about it getting infected. Everything else is still a looming problem, but not infection. Small fucking mercies.

“What are you going to do?” Damian asks. 

What  _ is  _ he going to do? Call for backup. Get Tiger to a safer location. Find a medical kit. Not necessarily in that order. 

“I’m going to find a secure place,” Dick says. He stands up. He belatedly realizes that he’s injured as well; aches make themselves known in his bones and cuts announce themselves on his skin. A wave of dizziness hits him, but he grits his teeth and rides it out.  _ Push right on.  _ He flexes his fingers. _ Come on. _

“You’re bleeding,” Damian says. There’s a cut on Dick’s shoulder that he hadn’t noticed at first. When he turns to look at it, he finds the entire back of his shirt soaked with blood. Anticogualant. Again.  _ Fuck _ this stupid fucking job.

He remembers passing a medical clinic a while back, while they were being pursued. Good enough. It has to be.

“You’re going to carry him?” Damian asks, tone snide. Dick doesn’t know why his mind has chosen to conjure up this version of Damian: the scowling, cynical child who first got dropped on Bruce’s doorstep. Dick loves—loved,  _ past tense, _ Damian, loved him even at his worst, when he was scared and bitter and violent, but he’s covered in Tiger’s blood and his ears are ringing and he genuinely, truly doesn’t know if he’ll survive watching another partner die in his arms. 

Dick leans down, coaxing an arm underneath Tiger. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Damian standing up as well. He brushes non-existent dust off of himself as he does, because that’s apparently the kind of detail that Dick’s mind pays attention to. 

It hurts to see. 

Fucking hell, Dick needs to  _ focus. _ He pulls Tiger up, hooking an arm underneath his shoulder and propping him up. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best he can do given the circumstances; Dick is exhausted and injured, and Tiger is both taller and heavier than him. Vaguely acting as a crutch to Tiger’s limp form will have to do. 

“This isn’t sustainable,” Damian comments, arms crossed. Dick ignores him.

When they’re both approaching upright, Tiger groans. Dick’s been in this business too long to get his hopes up over something like that, but when Tiger doesn’t respond further than that, he bites his lip so hard he tastes blood.

They have to go. Find a safehouse. Call for backup. Get medical supplies. 

He takes his first unsteady step. Tiger’s a dead weight at his side, but Dick’s pulled himself through the fucking desert. He’s borne the burden of his dead father’s cowl. He’s watched his own Robin bleed out in his arms. 

“I am not letting you fuck me over like this,” he tells Tiger.

Damian snorts. He’s walking on the other side of Dick, peering over at Tiger with sharp eyes.

“Talking to the dead man now, are we?” he asks.

Dick snaps, “He’s not dead.” 

Then, the absurdity of the situation hits him, and he gives a sardonic laugh. “Who are you to ask that, anyway?”

“I’m you, technically,” Damian replies. He holds out a hand in front of him, examining it in the low moonlight. 

“And why,” says Dick, deciding that if Damian’s going to be sticking around he might as well get some conversation out of it, “would I be conjuring up visions of you, only to have you be a nasty little brat to me?”

Damian shrugs. “I have a few different hypotheses,” he tells Dick. 

Hypotheses. Dick, despite himself, feels the corner of his mouth quirk. “Oh yeah?”

“Number one,” Damian says, raising one thin finger. “You’re undergoing a severe amount of cognitive dissonance, which is understandable, considering the circumstances of the past several months, and this is how your brain has decided you want to parse those contradictions.”

It’s a pretty sound theory, even if Dick resents being psychoanalyzed like that. “Possibly,” he allows.

Damian continues. “Number two: you’ve finally snapped and lost it,”

“Not off the table,” Dick admits with a snort. There's a pause.

“Number three,” Damian says. His voice has dipped; it’s so low that Dick has to strain to hear his next words. Staring down at the ground, Damian mumbles, “You’re lonely.”

_ Breathe out. Breathe in. _ Now is a terrible time for Dick’s tremors to return, so he wills himself into steadiness. 

“All of the above?” he offers quietly. 

Damian doesn’t reply. Just purses his lips, locking his jaw with a combination of fear and disappointment. 

Even like this, with Damian treating him like a stranger, Dick misses him. Dick misses him so much that the weight of it drags at his feet.

Or maybe that’s just exhaustion. He staggers slightly, and it’s only the panic he feels when Tiger starts to slip out of his grip that keeps him upright. Medical clinic. That’s shelter, medical supplies, and a phone to call backup. He just has to make it there.

_ They  _ just have to make it there.

Damian clicks his tongue. He’s on the other side of Tiger now, casting a critical eye over his slumped form. There’s a moment where he reaches out; his hand hovers in the air, ashes to ashes and dust to dust and dead partner to dying partner, and Dick feels like throwing up.

“He’s started bleeding again,” Damian says. 

Dick knows. He’s seen it already. The injury must’ve been jostled when he almost dropped Tiger. Fuck. He should’ve—he should be better than this. He should’ve prevented this somehow, and now that it’s happened and he’s here, he should be able to do this at least. Just this one thing. 

_ Save one person, and you save the whole world, _ Bruce told him once, so many years ago that the memory has blurred in Dick’s mind. 

“Richard, this isn’t sustainable.”

Damian has said that already.

Last time had been cold, callous. This time, Damian spits out the words with a childish whine. When Dick turns to look at him, there’s a strange, feverish fear in his eyes.

“It’s what I have to do,” Dick replies between harsh breaths. 

“You could leave him,” Damian says. “You could go to the clinic yourself, and then come back for him. It’d be faster, and—”

“I’m  _ not _ leaving him behind,” Dick snaps. Not in hostile territory. Not when the only reason Tiger’s injured at all is because he was protecting Dick. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Dick knows that Tiger would probably frown upon this; he would agree with Damian, if anything. That’s fine. Dick doesn’t care. Tiger can chew him out for his perceived bad decisions all he fucking wants when he’s  _ alive and recovered. _

Dick presses on. 

He can see a corner ahead. It’s just one left turn there, and then he’ll be on the street with the clinic. He’ll be on the home stretch. He’ll be okay.

Tiger will be okay.

He falters again, his knee almost giving out underneath him. It’s been a gruelling few days: no meals and no sleep and no peace. He feels his weakness like it’s a knife through his heart, right next to where the blade that his grief has fashioned itself into is plunged.

“Richard,” Damian says. “You have to leave him behind,”

“No,” Dick grits out. 

“He’s going to die, and if he dies, then you’re going to lie down and die with him. Aren’t you?”

Dick shudders in a breath. “Good thing,” he growls, “that he  _ isn’t _ going to die.”

There’s silence. He keeps going.

Then: a sigh. 

“You can’t save everyone, Richard,” Damian says. 

That makes Dick pause. Almost unbidden, he turns back, looks over his shoulder. 

Damian had stopped walking a few steps back. Now he stands, just outside of the reach of the nearest streetlight. Cast in shadow.

Dick looks at Damian.

“No,” he agrees, with a mournful smile. “I can’t.”

Then, he turns around, and keeps going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if ur thinking to urself, gee, this damian characterization is kinda whack, please remember that it's like. Not Damian. it's dick's own fucked up depressed spy psyche thinking about damian. there's layers. plz no flamez


	3. Chapter 3

Bruce isn’t responding. 

The first time, it had been an aberration. One that made something sharp and jagged settle in Dick’s stomach, but an aberration all the same; there’s plenty of reasons for Bruce, or even him, to miss a check-in. 

He doesn’t panic. He swallows the glass and keeps going.

The second time, he starts to panic a _little._ Frankly, the only reason he doesn’t have a full-blown breakdown after the second missed check-in is because Tiger comes in three minutes later with a new mission and new toys and new dangers. Dick can’t afford to break down. He pulls out every effort to compartmentalize, and he goes onwards, and he does not break down.

Third time’s lucky, though. Third time finds him with a couple of days of mandated rest, with the privacy of his own room, and with nobody around.

He puts his head between his legs and tries to breathe. 

The radio sits across from him. Oppressively silent. It’s been silent for three whole check-ins. Dick thinks that—he thinks that—he—

He doesn’t _know_ what to think.

Okay, lie. That’s a lie. He knows what to think. He’s been trained in knowing what to think in every situation. 

Bruce would never miss three check-ins in a row. Two had been pushing it. _One_ had been pushing it. Something must’ve happened.

“Richard.”

Dick flinches, but he doesn’t open his eyes. He guesses he must be getting used to this, because he ignores the interruption and lets his thoughts march on. He’s really not in the mood.

Something must’ve happened. Something so bad that it’s kept Bruce out of commission for this long, or at least kept him out of the Batcave; it’s possible that he’s fine, but Alfred has banned him from going down. The possibility is minimal, but it’s a possibility regardless.

“Richard,” Damian repeats again.

“What?” Dick snaps. He immediately feels bad. “Sorry,” slips out before he can stop it, then he feels like an idiot for apologizing to a figment of his own imagination.

He lift his head, and opens his eyes. 

Damian’s sitting cross-legged behind the radio, and Dick’s world abruptly narrows down to this: him, the radio, then Damian.

His panic solidifies in his chest. 

Damian purses his lips.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“He’s not picking up,” Dick tells Damian, because at this point there’s no more avoiding the _talking to dead people in your head_ thing and he should just embrace it.

Damian stares at him. 

Dick’s skin crawls. He continues, the words spilling out of him, “This is the third time he’s missed it. I—something has to be wrong. I think something’s happened to him.”

If Bruce Wayne or Batman had died, there was no way in heaven or hell that it wouldn’t have made it back to Dick. Especially not when he’s in Spyral. Especially not with Helena as his superior. 

But there’s a million things that could’ve happened to Bruce that fall short of death. Terrible things. Terrible things that Dick doesn’t want to consider, but forces himself to anyway, because if something has happened to Bruce than it’s beyond unacceptable for him to not take everything into account. This is Bruce, after all.

Damian doesn’t say anything, but that doesn’t matter. Dick’s too caught up in the tide of his own emotions now to need a response. He just keeps talking, fuelled by his own panic.

“Something has to have happened to him. I just—I don’t know what. It’s been _so long._ ”

What could’ve kept Bruce away for this long? A severe injury, maybe, or a kidnapping, or a coma, or _so many_ other things that Dick can only guess at because he is here and Bruce is in Gotham, getting hurt in god knows how many ways. 

Bruce is in Gotham, just like the rest of Dick’s life is: in Gotham and Bludhaven and New York and all of those other places that aren’t _here,_ that Dick can’t fucking reach.

“I don’t even know if he’s in Gotham at the moment,” he says. “I don’t know anything about what’s going on with him. He never told me anything, never even updated me on his life or said whether everyone was doing okay or that he missed me—”

He clamps his jaw shut, because he hadn’t meant to say that last bit, despite the frenzied way he was spitting out words right now. He hadn’t meant to let that one slip out at all. _Fuck._

He breathes out. 

Damian is still staring at him. He doesn’t look scared, though. He just looks… tired.

“I mean,” Dick says weakly, because he’s started and he can’t stop now. The dam has broken, and he’s being carried away by the flood. “I never asked. I never— I couldn’t really bring myself to. I never asked about the others, or about Bruce, or about… _anything,_ because I… I don’t think I could’ve taken it. Hearing about them.”

He draws up his knees, curling in on himself. 

“I think it was just. Easier. If I pretended that there wasn’t an entire life I was leaving behind. If I just focused on Spyral and the mission and the moment then I could almost trick myself into thinking that there wasn’t anything— anything… missing.” 

Damian says, very quietly, “But you cannot do that now.”

No. 

No, he cannot. Because now he feels the absence of it, of _everything_ he had left behind, so keenly that it is a knife in his side and a sword in his heart and an arrow in his throat. Now, there is no escaping it. 

Now, Bruce will not respond, and Dick doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do from here. Where he’s supposed to go.

He drags his hands over his face. Leaves them resting over his eyes. 

“Now,” he says, “all I can think about is whether or not something happened. What if Bruce was in danger? What if he—what if he still is?”

If Bruce is in danger, how far behind would Tim be? Or Jason? Or Cass? Or any of the other people who Dick loves, who never stray far from Bruce’s orbit, who are there when it counts and who aren’t off trying to destroy an international spy agency singlehandedly?

“Richard,” says Damian.

How is he supposed to help? How is he supposed to _know?_

_“Richard,”_ says Damian again, steely and sorrowful. 

It makes Dick feel ridiculous to do so, but he peeks through his fingers at Damian.

Damian shifts in place, uncrossing his legs and bringing his knees up to mirror Dick’s position. He wraps his arms around them, and suddenly he looks awkward, and discomfited, and achingly young. He had been so young. And maybe this, too, had been a reason Dick had avoided it all. There's no Gotham without Damian in it. There's no home without his heart.

“Yeah?” Dick mumbles.

Damian exhales.

He asks, looking down at the radio, “Did Father send you here without backup?”

 _Yes,_ thinks Dick. 

“Of course not,” he says. “He is my backup.”

Damian looks up. “And who else after him?” he asks sharply.

Dick doesn’t like where this is going. He lifts his hands off of his face, and when he does, the anger in Damian’s entire body comes into full focus. Oh. He really doesn’t like where this is going.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he says.

Damian’s expression grows stormier. He looks just like Bruce does, when he’s really, truly angry. The sight breaks Dick’s heart, and then keeps on breaking it. 

_“Who else,_ Richard,” Damian says tersely.

“I said I don’t want to talk about this,” Dick responds. He’s digging his nails into the back of his other hand. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to go here. He doesn’t want to think about this.

He must flinch, or shudder, or hunch over; either way, Damian sees the bruise, and presses on it.

“Who else knows you’re here?” he demands, and something inside of Dick boils over.

“Nobody!” he snaps. The volume shocks both of them. Damian’s eyes go wide.

The word echoes around his room, and only comes back stronger. _Nobody._

“He sent you here,” Damian says, bewildered and furious, “with no backup, with no other way of contacting him, with no—”

 _“I know,”_ Dick snarls. “I know, okay! I know what it looks like. He’s fucking _Batman._ I know that he always has a contingency, and then a contingency for that contingency, he has a Plan A all the way through to Plan Z and he doesn’t make mistakes and he doesn’t overlook things and he always does things for a reason! I know all of that!”

He’s panting. His heart has crawled all the way up into his throat, and everything he says has to get around it, and gets swallowed up in its bloody, desperate mess as a result. 

Still, he chokes out the words. “I don’t need that pointed out to me by my own fucked up psyche, okay? I—I know what it looks like, and I know what you’re thinking, and I _can’t_ think it. I can’t think like that. I fucking refuse _._ I’m going with the theory that Bruce has been hurt or endangered in some way, because even though that fucking _terrifies_ me, it’s much better than the alternative.”

Even when faced with the brunt of all the anger and fear and hurt that Dick has been nursing all of these months, Damian doesn’t flinch. He just lifts his head up higher. He meets Dick’s gaze.

He asks, “And what is the alternative?”

Dick exhales. 

“The alternative,” he spits, bitter, afraid, utterly exhausted, “is that he’s finally finishing what he started by sending me here, okay? The alternative is that I’ve outlived my usefulness, and he doesn’t need me anymore, and the world doesn’t need me anymore, and he’s decided that it’s time for him to drop me and leave me here to die like I deserve.”

The words sit heavily on his chest.

Despite everything, it still hurts to say. He’s been pushed off of a cliff, and he’s landed at acceptance at the bottom, but there’s still something so terrifying about the fact that this might be it. 

The fight goes out of Dick. This might be it.

In a small, scared voice—a child’s voice, an I-had-a-nightmare voice, a please-don’t-go voice—Damian says, “I don’t think you deserve that.”

Dick blinks away tears. 

“You’re dead, Damian,” he says gently. “You don’t think anything.”

On shaky legs, Damian stands up. His hands are still clenched, his knuckles white dry. When he glares at Dick, his eyes are shining with tears. 

Then, he turns and walks away.

Dick knows, with a terrible certainty, that he’s never going to see him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whether or not this gets a happy ending depends entirely on my mood tomorrow ngl


	4. Chapter 4

When it happens, it is with the finality of a line snapping: there is here, and there is there, and there is nothing in between.

Dick goes back to Gotham. He goes back to the Batcave.

He doesn’t know why he came here. It would’ve been kinder, and safer, and saner, to have gone to New York or Star City or Central City or  _ Metropolis, _ but he finds himself standing at the entrance to the cave and wondering what awaits him inside.

Bruce? 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to think about Bruce, after all that silence and worry and hurt only to find out that he’s been fine the entire time. Dick doesn’t even know if Bruce will be in the cave. Dick doesn’t even know if he has a place in Bruce’s life anymore.

Dick swallows. His throat is rough, and it feels like he hasn’t been able to speak with his own voice for years and years.

Tim might be in the cave. Jason, even, but he’s a bit more of a stretch. 

Dick doesn’t know whether Cass is still in Hong Kong or not. Dick doesn’t know anything anymore.

If they’re there, they’re going to be angry. At this point he doesn’t know what will hurt more: Bruce’s disappointment or his sibling’s anger. Realistically, he’s going to have to deal with both. Not hurting has been a luxury for him lately.

He breathes out raggedly.

He’s stalling. Still avoiding, still running; he digs his nails into his forearm and reminds himself that running without a destination is fucking useless. This is his destination.

This is home.

He walks up to the entrance. He puts his hand on the scanner, and in the second that it takes to process, he wonders if he’s been removed from the system.

It goes green. The door unlocks. 

Of course. Dick doesn’t know what he was worried about. Bruce is in the habit of keeping ghosts around, after all. Dick’s probably got a nice glass case waiting for him in the cave. Maybe even a cold and dismissive inscription, if he’s lucky. 

He looks at the unlocked door. It stares back, neither welcoming or unwelcoming. Just. There.

Dick pushes it open, and steps over the threshold.

If there’s anybody in the Batcave, they would know somebody had entered from the sound of the door clicking open and shut. Dick’s not completely incognito. But there’s a few moments. A few moments, where as he’s still standing in the shadows at the edge of the cave, he’s obscured from sight.

They can’t see him, but he can see them.

Tim’s at the computer.

And, there, in the centre of the training mats, stretching out his legs with a frown, is Damian.

Dick closes his eyes. 

Fuck.

Like this wasn’t going to be hard enough already. 

Maybe this is how it’s always going to be from now on. Maybe Dick is going to be haunted by Damian and all the ways he’s failed him, for the rest of his life. Maybe this is what he deserves. Who needs glass case memorials and old family portraits to suffocate you when you can do it in the quiet of your own head?

At the computer, Tim calls out, “Jason, if you’re just going to stand there, at least be subtle about it,”

Jason? Is he—Dick looks around, and then realizes that Tim was talking about  _ him. _ Oh. Tim thinks that he’s Jason.

Tim would probably be happier if it was Jason. Maybe they’re closer now. It would make sense.

Maybe they don’t need Dick either.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Dick thought he had already  _ done  _ the hard thing—leaving Spyral and opening the door and stepping inside—but he stands here in the darkness and wants nothing more than to turn around and bolt all over again. Maybe they’ll be better off if he disappears. Dick can no longer differentiate between his irrational, anxiety-driven thoughts and his genuine analysis of the situation. 

Then, rolling his eyes as if he’s had enough, Damian looks up. He peers into the darkness where Dick stands. He narrows his eyes.

Dick thinks he might throw up.

Damian scrambles to his feet, grabbing a training staff next to him and clutching it. He’s trembling.

He looks so young. He looks so scared. Dick wishes he could remember him as anything other than young and scared and bleeding out in his arms. 

Damian opens his mouth. His jaw trembles, like he can’t find anything to say, and then he’s clenching his teeth together again.

It’s a dream. It’s an illusion. Dick knows this. It’s not real.

Still, he steps forward into the light. Still, he meets Damian’s gaze anyway.

Dick is here. Damian is there.

And then, there is nothing in between them.

Dick blinks, and Damian drops the staff and takes off running. The clatter of wood hitting ground is what strikes Dick the most. Why would it be making sound? Why would Damian be running towards him, looking like that?

It’s not  _ real. _

You can’t touch a ghost. You can’t touch a ghost and you can’t outrun a memory and you can’t talk to dead people but Damian runs and leaps towards Dick anyway, and Dick opens his arms anyway, and he’s choking out  _ “Damian,” _ at the same time Damian gasps  _ “Richard,” _ and when Damian lands in his arms— when Dick feels the contact of flesh and bone and skin— when Damian throws his arms around him and sobs into his shoulder—

Dick feels his heart half-stop.

And he feels his heart half-start.

Damian is crying. It sounds as though it is coming from very far away. 

Dick closes his eyes, trying to focus, trying to make sense of what is happening right now. He feels the weight of a person, living breathing burning, in his arms. It’s Damian. How is Damian living breathing burning  _ here  _ right now?

Dick sinks to the ground. 

“Damian?” he whispers hoarsely. This can’t be something he’s making up. He couldn’t. 

Damian pulls his arms tighter around Dick. There’s so much strength in him, but it is still a child who sits in Dick’s embrace, and a child who cries into his shoulder. Damian is a child. A child who Dick had raised, for whom he loved, for whom he cared.

Loves. Cares.

_ Present tense. _

“You’re alive,” Dick breathes. He can’t make sense of the situation. 

Damian shouldn’t be alive, but he is. And there are maybe a million things between being  _ there, _ Damian dead and Dick dying in his absence, and  _ here, _ Damian alive and Dick stumbling towards life as well, a million things that Dick can’t begin to comprehend, but they all fall away. He lets them fall away. 

Damian is alive. 

Suddenly, that is all that matters.

Dick gasps, and wraps his arms around Damian, his partner, his  _ Robin, _ and swears to never let go.

Damian sobs, muttering back viciously  _ “You’re  _ alive!” and past the tears and snot, he sounds so petulant, so accusing, so very Damian. Dick already knows what it feels like to come back to life—to feel the life drain out of you, and then to feel yourself come back from that brink. 

He realizes that, up until this very moment, with Damian in his arms and Gotham all around him, he hadn’t come back yet. Not after having his heart restarted. Not after waking up in the cave. Not after suiting up for another mission. It’s  _ now. _

“Damian,” Dick sobs, crying into that canary-yellow cape, “I missed you so much. I missed you  _ so _ fucking much,”

Damian hugs Dick tighter. Between his sobs and hiccups he mutters viciously, “—woke up and you were gone I cannot believe you got yourself killed while I wasn’t here I missed you so much you idiot if you ever do that again I will—” and Dick can’t do anything upon hearing that but laugh.

Through the tears, he laughs, and remembers for the first time in a long time what it is like to be happy. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, cradling Damian closer, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I’m sorry. I won’t leave again. I’m so sorry,”

Damian pulls back just enough that he can look Dick in the eye. He’s a teary, red-faced mess, and Dick has never been so glad to see anybody before.

“You promise?” he demands, his hands tightening their hold around Dick’s shoulders. 

Dick leans their foreheads together. Promises are empty currency in their profession, but he nods anyway. He mumbles, “I promise, Damian. If you do as well.” 

“I promise,” Damian says readily. Dick presses his eyes shut against the fresh wave of tears that hits him. 

He has so much he wants to ask, so much he wants to say. Things like  _ I missed you every day _ and  _ I dreamt of you  _ and  _ you saved my life  _ and  _ I was lost without you. _

But, in the end, what he settles on saying first is a mumbled, “I love you,”

Damian gives him a watery smile. “I love you too,” he whispers.

For all that Dick’s mind tried to compensate, conjuring up memories and ghosts, there is nothing compared to the real thing. He’ll never take him for granted again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ngl was Not in the best mindset for writing today but i hope u enjoyed regardless. if u did: https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/donate


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